Tagged: Sexism

Veteran game industry professionals Brenda Romero and Alice Mercier admit they might have made some erroneous conclusions about the nature of men in the games industry, the women told Subtle Blend over the weekend.

“I went clubbing on Friday and took Brenda as my wingman,” Mercier said. “I’m coming off a pretty brutal divorce and I wanted to get my twerk on. Anyway, the place ended up being a bit of a meat market. Neither of us had been to a place like that in a while, so it was sort of surprising how many disgusting things dudes said to us. By the end of the night, we both kind of had this horrible realization that getting embarrassing come-ons from douchebags can happen anywhere. It has nothing to do with video games and it doesn’t rise to the level of sexual harassment.”

Mercier said her experience led to second thoughts about an earlier incident that led to the resignation of Indiestatik founder Josh Mattingly after he clumsily, crudely hit on the recent divorcee in a private Facebook conversation. (“Alice Mercier” is an alias used by the unidentified woman to speak to the games press about the incident.)

“Like, when Josh flat out told me he wanted to kiss my vagina, I was pissed and ready to sue Indiestatik to make sure this never happened to any woman ever again,” Mercier said. “It took me a while, but I’ve finally realized there’s no actual recourse to this, because we don’t work together, and Josh doesn’t have any kind of authority over me. He was just this sad son of a bitch who doesn’t know how to hit on chicks without being a skeez.”

At last week’s Game Developers Conference, Brenda Romero made an impassioned speech about an incident where an unnamed developer from a different company allegedly drew Romero’s attention to the outline of his erection while the two shared a drink at a trade show. Like Mercier, she’s beginning to consider games culture may be an extraneous, unrelated variable in the equation: “I spend a lot of time on Tumblr and Twitter looking at what my fellow Strong Female Games Professionals say about men in this industry, so I kind of lost sight of the fact that this behavior isn’t directly linked to video games in any way.”

Romero continued: “A guy who buys you one drink then points at his dick is half a fuckin’ social retard, whether it be at a trade show or a shitty dance club infested with college kids. It sucks, but unless the dude is your boss or a coworker, you turn him down with extreme prejudice and move on. You don’t have to run to the press about it.”

In a clear case of “life imitates art,” where “art” means “satirical posts on Subtle Blend dot com,” Dominique Pamplemousse creator Deirdra Kiai proposed that if straight white men are going to continue to systematically oppress Strong Female Game Developers, the least they could do is hit Deirdra Kiai up for her digits.

“I hate how people who aren’t straight white cisgender men are treated in the game industry. I hate that so many women can’t come to a professional event without getting hit on by some creepy dude… and I hate that it never, ever happens to me. I mean, who even thinks this? Shouldn’t I feel happy that I’m not getting hit on? No, I feel like shit. I start to wonder, what’s wrong with me? I clearly don’t look manly or bearded or stubbly enough, so I don’t get to be treated like a real human, but I’m also not hot enough for any of their creepy attention. I’m like invisible or something.”

Not much more to add to this one, just please note the intentional lack of a “satire” tag, as this is something someone actually said during a panel focused on how straight white males ruin everything with sexism.

Many celebrated Wednesday as Anita Sarkeesian received the GDC Ambassador Award for her Tropes vs. Women series. But as the gala fades into memory, a dark cloud of scandal threatens to overshadow the proceedings: Subtle Blend has spoken to an anonymous male developer who says he successfully lobbied many other male developers to vote for Sarkeesian.

The controversy: Were these votes cast in hopes of a payoff that never, shall we say, came?

“I did some serious horse trading for her,” said our source. “A lot of the guys didn’t want to vote for her because she hates the medium that keeps food on their tables. At first, I felt the same way. But then I got to thinking: A lot of these guys, it’s been so long since they’ve had a woman willing to have sex with them that they’ve sort of subconsciously placed the concept on the same tier as Malaysian airplanes: Intellectually, they know they have to be out there. But finding them? Can’t be done. So yeah, I voted for her. I was trying to get us all laid.”

Our source continued: “I figured that if we all voted for her as a way to show our support for everything she says, even when the stuff she says is demonstrably false, there’s no way she wouldn’t fuck us all. I mean, okay, at the least, I’m thinking handjobs all around.”

Not everyone was on board with our source’s plan, though. One professional artist our source approached was disgusted with the idea of voting for a woman who has lifted other people’s work without credit or compensation for inclusion in a six-figure project. Explains our source, “There was this one dude, he was actually kind of down on the whole idea. He’s like, ‘Anita outright steals the work other people do and takes credit for it. How can you sleep at night after lobbying for her?’ and I’m like, ‘Dude, are you going to suck my dick?’ That shut him up pretty fast, though he’s not returning my calls anymore. Loser.”

But after the award was handed out onstage, something happened: Anita Sarkeesian left the venue without so much as watching a single game developer that had voted for her jerk off. Needless to say, there was outrage: “I’ve talked to the guys, we’re going to demand a recall. That’s what happens when a politician breaks his implied promises, and that’s what we’re going to do. In the end, the power of the people will overcome, because an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere, and my balls are dangerously full of injustice right now. Seriously, it hurts. I think I need a doctor.”

“Tons of sexist juvenile jokes coming from host of the GDC awards last night. Anyone know where all the ‘what is wrong with our industry’ articles are, talking about a call to arms and how we must change our awful industry perception? I’m sure they gotta be out there…right? No way in the world that all of these high horse web sites that cry foul every time a man says something potentially offensive are letting the same behavior slide because the speaker was a woman, right? That would be so crazy if that happened!”